Ink Out Loud: Tracker, hunter, humanitarian

He is a hunter. Dark hair, muscle-bound and a touch of manly 5 o'clock shadow -- he looks like a quintessential tracker, for sure.

Nathan Wolfe blazes his trail.

He is so cool that last year TIME magazine recognized Wolfe as one of the 100 Most Influential People.

Rolling Stone magazine called him one of the 100 Agents of Change in 2009 and Popular Science dubbed him as one of its Brilliant 10 in 2006.

A writer for the New Yorker described Wolfe as "the world's most prominent virus hunter."

You get the picture. He's internationally-known and respected.

Wolfe is the founder and CEO of Metabiota and founder and executive chairman of Global Viral Forecasting Initiative.

He is also the Lorry I. Lokey visiting professor of human biology at Stanford University.

His mission is to promote understanding, exploration and stewardship of the microbial world.

According to Wolfe's website, "endeavors coordinate more than 100 scientists and staff globally by spotting viruses as soon as they surface by collecting and cataloguing blood samples, surveying wild animals, scanning urban blood banks and documenting the transfer and distribution on disease. Data gleaned from a dozen field sites in Cameroon, China, Malaysia and other countries have led to the discovery of a number of previously unknown infectious agents, notably simian foamy and t-lymphotropic viruses that emerged into humans from primate reservoirs."

In his own words: "As a species, I think we have no choice but to try and forecast pandemics. We have such incredible capacity to think about the future, it's time we used it to predict biological threats. Otherwise we'll be blindsided again and again."

Allow me to bring the importance of Wolfe's work a little closer to home.

The Lake County AIDSWalk takes place Saturday. Registration is at 9:30 a.m.

Maybe if Wolfe's tracking was in place years ago there would not have been so many people impacted by the devastating virus.

Even though many people associate the AIDS virus with a time period during the 1980s, many researchers think it was transmitted from apes to humans near the turn of the century and was likely isolated to a small population until the 1930s.

We might have been able to forgo the huge heartbreaking quilt with the squares representing the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children who lost their lives in pain and often in shame -- if only the virus had remained isolated.

AIDSWalk Lake County is in its fifth year. Proceeds from the event will assist Lake County residents living with HIV and/or AIDS.

Austin Park in Clearlake is the site of the annual walk that promotes education and outreach.

There are many ways to participate in the AIDSWalk. Walk the course around Austin Park and pay an entry fee or get sponsored.

The entry fee is $5 per walker. Sponsored participants with pledges of $50 or more receive an event T-shirt.

AIDSWalk organizers amplified focus on young people for this year's event since nearly 50 percent of all new HIV infections are among people 24 years old and younger.

For more information about AIDSWalk call 995-1606 or stop by 8050 A Lake St. in Lower Lake.

To learn more about Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit that initially received funding from google.org and the Skoll Foundation, visit www.gvfi.org.

To learn more about Nathan Wolfe visit nathanwolfe.net.

"If a pandemic is like a wildfire, then our hunters are kindling, [and] large, dense urban population centers are the logs."? Nathan Wolfe

Mandy Feder is the Managing Editor at Lake County Publishing. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 ext. 32. Follow on Twitter @mandyfeder1.